Re: Dominions Nations Evaluations ;)
 

Actually I find that slingers and such are pretty decent for expansion. Marverni's slingers have shields, which means they win missile duels. You'll still need ground troops (slingers are kind of like arty spells in that they have trouble finishing off the last few survivors) but missile troops are not bad at all for expansion. I haven't done this with Marverni slingers recently, but when I first tried LA Agartha I consistently had problems expanding until I forgot about my blessed blindfighters and did expansion with crossbowmen and cave drakes. Marverni slingers are ten times easier to mass than LA Agarthan crossbowmen. So anyway, I don't think massing up slingers is banking on the "worst unit in the game." Slingers are much better than Wind Riders, for instance. (Also note that if he "randomly loses a troop here and there", probably because someone doesn't get blessed or gets out of formation, it probably costs as much as "significant attrition" for me. 1 Helhirding = <font color="red">9</font> slingers.)

Do note that missile troops scale better than melee troops. 5 F9W9 Helherdings would probably cream their gold-cost equivalent in slingers. That does tend to steepen the learning curve because you have to learn when you have "enough". One thing to do to get a feel for "enough" is to leave an PD 1 border territory so that when he attacks it, you can simulate a battle against his forces by Shift+U placing your own army's equivalent units directly on the battlefield. That's how I do most of my testing. It's not perfect but it's a lot less tedious than playing out test games.

One more note: Helheim is clearly stronger in the early game than Marverni. They have better troops, more strategic options (because of stealth), better intel (because of flying stealth troops), etc. I just don't think Helheim's troops deserves a 5 to Marverni's 1 or 2. Cost matters.

-Max

<font color="red">Edit: fixed math.</font>

Re: Dominions Nations Evaluations ;)
 

The 5 F9W9 Helhirding beating their gold cost equivalent is the problem.

You're going to need 1 big slinger army to win and he's going to have 4-5 small stealthy Helhird forces that can slaughter everything but that big army.

Re: Dominions Nations Evaluations ;)
 

But if you catch one of his little stealthy forces by guessing where one of the 4-5 is going to go, you can annihilate it with your big army. That's 610 gold right there, assuming he's using a cheap commander.

Again, Helheim is clearly stronger, but Marverni's troops aren't bad. My original reason for mentioning the slingers was mainly just that I wanted to point out that going for elite troops like Ambibates vs. Helheim is a losing game.

-Max

Re: Dominions Nations Evaluations ;)
 

My point about the logistical difficulty with the massed slingers is just that, logistics. While every turn your enemy is probably putting out a death squad of 5 Helherdings with a blesser, a single turn worth of slingers in one province isn't going to do much, and is going to require a lot more leadership. If he has 20 sacreds in one force, the amount of slingers needed becomes very cumbersome to wield in the early game. Also if he were to go for W9/E9, you might find that the slings just don't accomplish much. And in the case of Marverni, if you are trying to combat melee troops, those shields may be more of a liability, by increasing cost, or reducing training rate.

Re: Dominions Nations Evaluations ;)
 

Yes. He could also research Const-3 and cast Legions of Steel, and/or Ench-3 for Strength of Giants. Helheim has great troops and yes, logistics matters.

Shields don't increase cost but they do affect resources. I think that's why Marverni's slingers cost 3 resources instead of 2.

-Max

Re: Dominions Nations Evaluations ;)
 

Also, I actually consider f9w9 somewhat suboptimal for Helhiem. I'd rather e9f9 (often just e9 with an awake pretender), and I think the extra protection would significantly help them against slingers.

Re: Dominions Nations Evaluations ;)
 

Thank you all for these. They are great. As I suspected Jomon should be down at the bottom and it is on quantum_mechani’s list. No one else has even thought it was deserving of a rating http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

In fact on quantum_mechani’s list it’s joint worst with MA Agartha. And while I know you can’t really get worse than worst, and I of course am no where near as experienced as QM, I have to quibble at his high rating of 2 for ease of use MP http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

I can’t think of a slower starter or a power that has more difficulties leveraging its advantages than Jomon. While Jomon’s shortcomings can be overcome in SP where the pressure to get off to a good start is less and you have a bit more time to develop its national summons (which have no synergies with its national mages – they can’t summon or even look for the needed gems for the decent ones).

Consider – your starting army is bad featuring just 20 units, 10 of which are the hopeless shieldless spear infantry the Ashigari. It will struggle to take a 5 strength indie province and likely to take serious losses doing so.

Your national troops are very resource intensive yet lack shields or especially high defence or protection. They do suffer from high encumbrance though http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif They are, to be fair, fairly hard hitting. This combination means it is tough to even keep your weak starting army up to its original strength never mind expand it. Even if you splash out on Prod 3 - thus spending 240 more points than most of your opponents in this area http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/smile.gif - you are still struggling to build more than 5 not very good units per month at the start and perhaps double later on.

There is no bless strategy you can play as its Sacreds are Capital only, hard to mass (too resource intensive) and they are basically just encumbered, shieldless, heavy infantry whatever bless you add.

You have no synergies with most of your national troop summons or any of the Thug summons you get.

You absolutely need an awake SC and yet you need to add paths to any choice to have access to your national summons. Most SCs are expensive to add paths too. Plus the best fit choice – the Prince of Death – isn’t available to Jomon. You can give up on the summons of course but then your mid/late game suffers.

Your mages are good researchers / all rounders. But they need Communions to do much in combat. And Communion use is one of the harder Dom 3 skills to master. Plus they need to empower to be able to make the astral rings. They are not sacred either – not that you can afford a bless – but this also adds to long term costs and off sets the reasonable purchase price. None are specialised enough to create the better boosters or cast decent summons and global spells.

No blood or death and weak astral means you have to work hard to overcome this for the late game (and the need for an awake SC means you can’t easily use your pretender to get around this).

I am not saying there are no nice things about Jomon. There are. But I can’t think of a less easy to use power in MP. Quantum_mechani has rated it higher than LA Pythium for ease of use in MP. Yet they have Sacred Hydras for the early game, not everyones cup of tea, but they will get you through the early stages. Even if you don’t pay for a bless Hydras are still a decent, if expensive, build for early expansion. And as many of your mages are sacred even a moderate bless lives on after you have ceased to use the Hydras.

Meaning you have choices for your Pretender. You can take an awake SC for a quicker start or an Angel summoner for your fantastic (as opposed to Jomons decidedly average) national summons later. I know the last rating is not meant to be how good the powers are, but how can LA Pythium be considered more difficult to play in MP?

Re: Dominions Nations Evaluations ;)
 

Hmmm, haven't experimented, but the quickness gets them across the field a lot faster. This often makes a difference against missile, which are their main weakness.

The extra protection helps too of course.

Re: Dominions Nations Evaluations ;)
 

Well, as I said in my notes, I rated ease of use for how difficult it is to get the most out of the nation- for some nations the most is not all that much. Mostly the low difficulty rating was because there is really only one troop you need to consider recruiting (longbow samurai).

Re: Dominions Nations Evaluations ;)
 

I concur. E9 keeps them at zero fatigue which means they kill all the day long, and also boosts protection. I view W9 as counterproductive for elite units.

-Max

Re: Dominions Nations Evaluations ;)
 

I couldn't agree more max.

People widely consider slingers worthless, and airblesses as well. Vanheim's strength is its glamour ability

Slingers are one of the cheapest and most effective ways to get rid of that. Which is why I believe that air blesses, situationally, rock.

Especially since they are effective with a partial bless.

Re: Dominions Nations Evaluations ;)
 

I think this is a great post. Particularly for including difficulty of learning which is usually left out of such discussions. Nations are often loudly rated by people who love blitz games and strategy by massed armored troops. And for general impression that might be ok.

But some nations are obviously built around specific skills, and people tend to rate them low because they dont utilize those skills. One of my favorite topics are the nations built around sneak. If you have a nation with sneak leaders, sneak warriors, sneak priests, sneak mages, with special skills which can have very different when used with sneak.. then it can be obviously a problem if people rate them who didnt try to play with sneak tactics. Same with flight, or fire aura, or extensive bless. Playing all nations the same way in the same types of games does not do those nations proper credit.

I have no trouble with the ratings in general. After all, saying that such a race rates low isnt necessarily wrong. If most people playing that nation are likely to come out low then its a truthful statement. Im just glad that it can be balanced with a difficulty of learning rating.

Re: Dominions Nations Evaluations ;)
 

This comes off as a little derogatory towards people where prefer smaller and quicker games. Which is aside from the fact that almost any competent blitz player will tell you that relying on masses of armored troops is one of the classic missteps of people new to multiplayer.

Re: Dominions Nations Evaluations ;)
 

I suppose it does abit. I probably should be more lenient. After all, blitz games naturally tend to be the most numerous games so blitz opinions should probably carry the weight of a vocal majority. As long as it doesnt come across as the only answer.

Re: Dominions Nations Evaluations ;)
 

I don't think they are the most numerous games, SP games are. And certainly not even close to a majority of players. I would roughly guess only about about 10-20% of the total number of MP players play blitz games.

I'm also not sure there is a dichotomy between people who are good at blitzes and those good at long term games- almost everyone I can think of who plays blitz games plays other dominions multiplayer games as well.

Re: Dominions Nations Evaluations ;)
 

Well there again you'll find an interesting dynamic though. Blitzes will rely more on early game strength. Smaller maps with less than 15 provinces per player and less than 10 players will shift more towards mid game strength being of primary importance in victory. While finally, larger and longer games is where the late game strength will more often be the deciding factor. (though any game that is mid-late game focused will still be affected by the earlier stages of course, just that late game strength is meaningless in a blitz game)

So theoretically, if there were an enormous amount of ratings submitted, MP Ease of Play would be skewed slightly towards early game strength, where a nation whose strength progression went 5-3-3 would tend be consider better for MP success than a nation who played as 3-3-5. But mainly because we're not differentiating between lengths of games, I thought rating in 5 different categories was a good compromise between detail of the data, and user friendliness of the chart. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Re: Dominions Nations Evaluations ;)
 

I think you should give notes, if you think some nations are over or undervalued in this thread, as the goal is to take into account as many players opinions possible before giving a final note.

Anyway I also think according to your post that you'd value too much some situationnal abilities or ignore their drawbacks.

Sneaking is a good example. With stealth armies you lose one turn or more before the moment you effectively take an ennemy province. It's not a bad skill, but a secondary one, if you use stealth with all yours armies you'll just be beaten by nations able to do normal moves and take your provinces (or re-take in one turn the provinces you reached in 2 or 3 with your stealth forces). It has nothing to do with blitzes, it's even more true for big games with good number of provinces, where economy matters. Having stealthy units may worth +0,5 point for midgame note, as having a sneaky raiding potential with nationals is good, but doesn't worth one / five by itself (except if you have really good high stealth thugs or sacreds, probably with glamour).

Flight is different, as it allows to strike every turn, and behind ennemy lines it's a real advantage. But the quality of flyers is often problematic to the point flyers nations often prefer to use them only as support for their non flying troops. I probably value caelian fly one point, but caelum also lose one for the global quality of troops (out of mammoths justifying a good early game note).

Blesses are always assumed in early game notes for bless nations I think (at least in my notes ; many nations having 4 or 5 in EG would desserve a 2 or 3 without bless). Some other nations may succeed with a bless but it hasn't to be valued as what they can do with an awake pretender or good scales is about the same (ie : I assume that LA Atlantis will have an awake pretender + a simple bless, or an inferior/non-awake pretender + a strong bless, or good scales instead of a bless allowing to recruit more ice armor troops, in the three cases the nation desserve about the same good early note).

Re: Dominions Nations Evaluations ;)
 

Absolutely! That's exactly what I was trying to say. Rate them according to what you can expect them to have, which includes what YOU give them. If your whole strategy is banking on finding a territory you can recruit Cavemen (RANDOM example! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif), then your rating of 5 can't account for how uncommon it is to fulfill your expectations. &gt;.&gt;

Though I find particularly interesting the few nations that can be played as peak competitors either with a strong dual bless, or without a major bless at all, like Hinnom. But that goes more to boosting Ease of Play, than the actual strength rating.

Re: Dominions Nations Evaluations ;)
 

Regarding Marverni against small elite armies:

Marverni has - besides slingers - cheap javelin throwers. There is the spell farstrike at zero research for druids and early thaumaturgy research has good anti elite spells, I think.

The best bet Marverni has is to come out with fast expansion and lots of gold and diplomacy to demonstrate that you will make the attacker pay hard for an early attack. If you have to dedicate mages to counter rushes you have partly lost already, but the attacker will not get far either.

I would rate Marverni as 3 4 4 but very difficult to learn.
What you field with what orders depends so much on the opposition. You have to learn communions to be effective. You need to research extremely fast, building lots of forts.
It's endgame really depends on what you do about SCs. Your only thug is the golem.

EA Tir na n\'OG
 

Having played Tir na n'Og in several MP games...

Early Game Strength 3 (poor infantry selection, no calvary, poor ranged troops, taking SC pretender is a bad idea)
Mid Game Strength 5 (Ri, Rain of stone + Fog warrior, many powerful battlefield spells)
Late Game Strength 2 (lack of powerful summons due to early focus on battlefield magic, lack of astral and death)
Ease of Learning (SP) 3 (not that difficult to learn, but takes skills to learn it right)
Ease of Use (MP) 2 (I find it hard to use this nation in MP, even harder to win with it).

Re: Dominions Nations Evaluations ;)
 

I do have a leaning in my own evaluations. I tend to play really large games, large maps, solo. And I tend to play more tactics than strategy. In other words, not so much pre-planning as counting on and being able to react favorably to random changes in the game.

Not necessarily. Some of the best strategies for stealth armies involve splitting an enemies forces so that they cannot hit you with one massive army on one front. Forcing an enemy to invest more in defense than they normally would. Hiding your buildups, and even the locations of your castles. The strong ability to ally by being able to buildup in a safe corner and yet move thru your neighbor to assist them. Forcing an enemy to expend more on combat than you to reach you if you create a "moat" of strong independents. Not to mention the ability to play 3rd party by hiding a large army in the area where two other players are fighting in order to take advantage of a weakened position after one has expensively beaten down the other.

Also, there would be the strategy of guerrila rebels. Even after losing your home castle and provinces you can still be a strong enough player to affect the outcome of a game.

Also, the use of Pans wandering thru provinces dropping maenads each turn can be very effective. There is no "waste of a turn" there. Without ever becoming visible they create combats each turn testing the defenses of their opponent, forcing expenditure in defense, slowing the movement of armies, and gaining extremely detailed information on the enemy.

That would be a different strategy than one which is built entirely around the ability to fly. Such as early detection of everyones location. Being able to "checker jump" to them. That would be taking every third province between you and them. Building up independents in only those sporadic locations. Hitting the enemy early, making it more expensive for him to reach you than it is for you to reach him (forcing him to fight thru independents such as jumping over all knight provinces as you approach him), being able to build up your army near him until you feel ready to take out all of the indep locations. Granted, this is a large-map strategy but it shows that every nation and every skill does have some use in some games.

Also, again, there is the ally benefit with a flyer nation. Being able to work around the limitation of "I cant move my armies thru his area to help him" by negotiating the taking of stepping-stone provinces thru his area.

What you say is definetly true. And would excellent for players to take into account depending on their playing style. Part of MY problem is that Im a very old-school hacker. I automatically tend to seek playing styles different than whatever most people are using.

Blessed nations are often played without a full strategy built around blessings. Not figuring in dominion is the largest lack I see. Particularly in charging forward beyond the range of their dominion (Im not saying that you do, just that I see it often). Altho people tend to rate it as a combat strategy, I tend to see it better used to bolster defensive armies. Particularly in a waiting game where the nations main strategy is research. Again, probably best in large games. Possibly mega-games where just getting past the "hump" of the initial build-up-and-charge players is an important part of your goal.

IMHO of course.

Re: Dominions Nations Evaluations ;)
 

You've suggested this before and I still can't see how it's effective. The maenads lack a leader and thus autoroute. 1PD is enough to beat them. So there's essentially no defense expenditure, it doesn't slow army movement. You do get detailed info, but 300+ gold is a lot for an improved scout.
And the trail of maenads lets him know where your Pan is going. It should also only work in turmoil, or do they still get a few in enemy order dominion?
What am I missing?

Re: Dominions Nations Evaluations ;)
 

They still get a few. And granted it does work best in areas where you can move in and out of a players territory to avoid laying TOO exact a trail. Even in a players territory since it happens each turn, its still hard to gauge where the attack will occur next. The best tactic against it was to crank the PD in sporadic provinces in the area to try the level of being able to catch scouts.

Granted I havent tested this since the latest changes in maenads (I hate the new look) but it used to be that the berserker did have some balancing benefit against the autorout. On some random rolls it used to be that you could win. Sometimes both sides routed at the same time.

Re: Dominions Nations Evaluations ;)
 

Ok, I can see that. Against weak PD with archers or fliers, early hits could berserk a few maenads who might then beat the PD.

Re: Dominions Nations Evaluations ;)
 

I find it quite difficult to rate nations - there are too many variables.

1. I haven't come close to playing played every nation in MP and I think that is the real testing ground. Hard to imagine many people have played every nation in MP, given how long an MP game takes. But I suppose once you know how MP works you can study a nation's units and extrapolate as to how they will perform.

2. Some of those MP games have been with pros, some with noobs, others a mix. Doing well in a noob game may give you a false sense of confidence about how powerful your nation is.

3. A lot of how any game turns out will depend on pretender design, scales, finding indie mages, random events, diplomacy, a neighbor going AI, etc.

That said, the commentary on nation strength is quite interesting. My sense though is you can win with almost any nation using a mix of skill and luck as long as you have access to diverse magic. Magical diversity is the key as magic provides the tool box of counters, and counter-counters that help make the game fun and give it such a steep learning curve.

Re: Dominions Nations Evaluations ;)
 

I once posted a timeline something like this...
1) get Dominions, play the tutorial, play some solo games.
2) post that xxxxx nation is obviously way too powerful (ermor? ctis? ulm?)
3) play more nations and discover the misleading rock-paper-sissors balance of the nations
4) play all of the nations and discover that one of them kicks ***
5) post that nation xxxxx is way too powerful because you always win with it
6) try a multiplayer game and discover that everyone ended up with the same answer, but strangely with different nations. For some reason they play those other nations differently, and rather effectively.
7) eventually iron out the best stategies for you playing with your favorite nation. Back to kicking ***.
8) wander into a multiplayer game of an era different than you usually play, and lose badly
9) iron out the variables for your favorite nation in each era.
10) eventually discover that you really can kick *** with your favorite nations
11) stray into a multiplayer game of a totally different size or parameters
12) discover that map size, map styles, number of players, settings, etc all have quite abit to do with your ability to kick ***. SIGH and realize that it will take years more time for you to explore all of the possibilities

Re: Dominions Nations Evaluations ;)
 

Gandalf Parker:

Well, no matter what you say some nations are overpowered. And devs are not doing much to change it. And that are not only nations, it is more about magic paths, huge domintion of astral, death and blood magic over other paths. Of course some people can win with MA Man against MA Arco, but chances are same like Liechtenstein beating Brasil in soccer.

Re: Dominions Nations Evaluations ;)
 

The only nations I would agree are too powerful are LA R'lyeh and LA Ermor. They are the only nations that have game mechanics that alter the game progress in a game. Their very participation makes other players behave differently in order to cope. In the case of Ermor this bothers me less, since they are supposed to be a world threat and they are central to the development of the dominions series. R'lyeh is a bit of a bother since they share some game mechanics with Ermor, but has more options and diverse powers.

I will not consider a nation overpowered unless it can beat two other nations ganking up on the strong one. That is what MP is all about. It is the responsibility of the neighbors to know the main strengths and weaknesses of a nation. The forum, playtesting and in game diplomacy should give anyone the tools to evaluate a nation and make sure it is destroyed before it gets too successful.

I do understand that some nations are more powerful than others, but the nice thing about MP is that balance develops during the game. A nation that is unable to take advantage of game settings, map features, sites and such is too weak. A nation that is always successful regardless of game settings, map features, sites etc is probably too strong.

I do not consider MA Man too weak. Boring perhaps, but not weak.

There are more than fifty nations in the game. Of course some are more powerful. Since we have ordinary day jobs, and divert most of our developing time to our other project there will obviously not be changes to every nation (since every nation needs changes).

I do get annoyed when you say we don't do much to change it. You have probably reduced the chances of having MA Man getting a fix. Machaka feels more interesting now.

Hmm, sorry about that Zeldor. It was not intended as an attack on you or Man, but I do actually dislike to work with nations when I remember people complaining about them. It gives me a sour feeling, and since I work with things that makes me happy I avoid working on nations which make me feel unhappy.

Things that makes me happy are when people say they like the feel and mood of a nation and that they feel that it is sad that it is not more strong in this department or that area. This gets me inspired and makes me think more about the nation instead of less, and will probably have the result that I will add stuff.

A discussion on how cool KoA are will likely make me feel that they are cool, look at them and think that they are too uncool in the game. A discussion where someone complains about the fact that they cannot move about and are underpowered compared to dada.. will just make me leave the discussion and look at a thread talking about how cool bane spiders are, even if they can only be recruited at home. I will then silently agree and think about what can be done to the banespiders, including new graphics and a set of new and cooler powers to compensate.

Sorry about the rant. I had too much coffe last night and woke up after four hours of bad sleep. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Dominions Nations Evaluations ;)
 

Kristoffer O:

Yeah, Machaka! I knew you are secreatly working on EA and LA version.

I simply made really bad idea of playing MA Man in MP some time ago. And I like complaining too http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

I will try to limit that or find a way to do it in more sublte way http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Oh, there is just one really tiny thing you could look at - cost of Mind Hunt http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Dominions Nations Evaluations ;)
 

I agree with Gandalf. The good thing is even if you play a perceived weak nation, you can design a pretender that helps compensates for you nation's weakness, like taking the Enchantress with an Astrally challenged nation. Use her gems for Arcane Probing and with any luck, you will have some nice indy Astral mages. In MP like KO says, use your nation's reputation of weakness to avoid getting ganged up on. Play the role of the henchman in the shadows, but working every turn to strengthen your weaknesses. With trading and luck you can hang in there with the big boys. Certainly there are nations that are easier and stronger,it would be impossible otherwise, but I think there are enough variables in a game that most anything is possible.

Re: Dominions Nations Evaluations ;)
 

Every time you mention this I get excited. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

-Max

Re: Dominions Nations Evaluations ;)
 

I do love you sir. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

I will bear well in mind that you are more responsive to positive critique, and work to inspire you on any problem areas that I may discover in my ceaseless analysis of this incredible world and game which has been miraculously spun for us to enjoy.

I think it's an important and valuable part of this community, that our gods in fact retain their mortality, and meddle in the affairs of men, and sometimes..... but sometimes, hear our prayers. &lt;3

Re: Dominions Nations Evaluations ;)
 

Re: Dominions Nations Evaluations ;)
 

Excellent! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/cool.gif

This should be your no. 1 priority, you would not believe how eager I am to part with my cash for another Illwinter product. I really hope its every bit as addictive, fun, enjoyable as dominions.

Really, we have had loads of patches giving us huge amounts of extras to Dom3. Just work on Dom3 when you are burned out from doing your other, 'project' http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif and of course school work etc... that you do.

I agree with everything you say in your rant, Ma Man thematically is a excellent nation, its based on Robert Jordans books I believe. I like the nation, even if it does not translate to a powerful Dom3 MP nation. The bards are a great unit and overall Ma Man only needs a few slight changes to its national units to be a great nation.

But like I said new game, new game, new game.... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

Re: Dominions Nations Evaluations ;)
 

Feudal system, longbowmen (yeomen), the traditional three witches (daughter, mother, crone), Tower and Forest of AVALON, questing Knights of X (stone, round table, whatever), Green Knight - it's pretty strongly Arthurian legends influenced by feudal Britain. It's nice that you like the nation, but I can't see any connection to Wheel of Time.

Re: Dominions Nations Evaluations ;)
 

I guess it could be. Depends on what books you have read. But yes all of the nations have a theme. It might be hard for some of us to spot some since few of us would have read all of the books that Kristoffer has (tying in with his real daytime job)

Re: Dominions Nations Evaluations ;)
 

I'm pretty sure KO said at some point that the wardens/witches thing was inspired by the Wheel of Time.

Re: Dominions Nations Evaluations ;)
 

Oh, that. Hmm. I always thought of them as some kind of an experiment, not as elite bodyguards like the guys in Wheel of Time were. And it seems they're even called Warders in English.
The all-witch magic could also be Jordan-inspired, since there isn't even a Merlin hero. It's strange, though, because Bards surely didn't come up with LA Man's magic. Some kind of MA Man mage that could work in the transition after they lost the Nature magic would be nice.

Re: Dominions Nations Evaluations ;)
 

I want to add a balance of power rating for the middle era, as it the only one I feel qualified to do. But it will take a bit of work, and I am not up to it yet.

But, I will add a few thoughts:

Tartarians were effectively nerfed, which means that MA Pythium and Marignon's endgame rating has been boosted.

I agree with KO that Man is playable. They are not a broken race. They could be improved, but so could other nations. I do feel that MA Ulm was broken, and am grateful KO fixed them.

When you have people messaging you at the start of Perpetuality for a MA Ulm sighting, then you know that race was broken. It was often a race to MA Ulm's capital, which of course, to some degree, highlighted their deficiencies.

I also like the fact that not all races and spell lines are equally powerful. WOW recently bowed to its vocal minority and gave the evil races "paladins" just so everything could be identical. Identical is boring.

It requires no challenges. LA Ermor and LA Ryleh were not excluded from Kingmaker because they were unbalanced, but because of the unit cap. If there was no unit cap, they would have been viable race selections.

It is the players' fault that LA Ermor and LA Ryleh were allowed to ascend to world domination in perpetuality. Petty bickering should have been set aside, and those races should have been terminated by group effort in the beginning phase.

Re: Dominions Nations Evaluations ;)
 

Not to go into the full Man is broken argument, but part of the reason you see people begging for an Ulm location and not Man is that Man is actually decent at the start, though not strong enough to rush, but lacks in mid/late game power, while Ulm was weak along, but especially vulnerable to an early rush.

Longbows &amp; lightning do fairly well against elephants and some sacreds.

Re: Dominions Nations Evaluations ;)
 

I am glad KO is not fooling with Man. Hopefully I will get motivated and finish my Kingdom of Avalon Mod and actually get
someone to test them in a mp game setting.

Sort of a beta test to some of the numerous suggestions. If the changes stand up to a good mp test, maybe some could be considered.

Re: Dominions Nations Evaluations ;)
 

I totally agree on the "same is boring". I hate games that balance the multiplayer aspect by creating matching armies that simply wear a different colored coat.

Hence the problem with some "fix" requests. Saying that a nation needs xxxxx for a fix might be considered step one. Then comes the problem of creating that fix in a way that fits the nation in question. If we just wanted to toss units around between the nations then we can do that easily enough with mods. Kristoffer isnt likely to do that without his usual amount of heavy researching. If he cant find a thematic match, then Im guessing the "much needed fix" is unlikely to occur.

Lesson to be learned: dont just say it needs it. Make an effort to pitch it thematically. And along the same lines, remember that you are making a request, not placing an order. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Dominions Nations Evaluations ;)
 

One reason people want Ulm and Man to be decently strong, is we identify with those races.

Most players' 1st races are Ulm and Man. We grew up with Robin Hood, King Arthur, and Knights, so it is natural to gravitate to those when you start playing.

Until you meet a banelord. oh, love at 1st sight!

Re: Dominions Nations Evaluations ;)
 

I completely agree that "same is boring". It's however annoying when any suggestion of balance issues is met with dismissal by such arguments. Especially when no one has suggested making all the nations the same.

A bunch of thematic suggestions were made in the last thread this came up in. No need to hijack this thread further by repeating them here. It sounds like Xietor trying to incorporate some of them into a mod. I don't play with mods much, there's too much in the base game I haven't really seen yet, but I look forward to this.
There were several mods improving Ulm before the patch changed them. Most of the changes didn't come from them though.

Re: Dominions Nations Evaluations ;)
 

Though relatively new, particularly in MP, I have something to say on the following nations:
EA Ulm 4 4 2 4 2 (as said, lack of uber-sacreds in EA, + low MR; no Astral, Blood, weakish Death. But troops are good enough &amp; forge bonus quite good).
EA Helheim 5 4 4 4 2? (sacreds, though I don't use uber-bless, but common troops are strong, too; good Death magic, weaker Blood; in MP stealthy armies are more difficult to use properly)
EA Sauromatia 5 5? 5? 4 4? (strong overall, poison archers &amp; Hydras can replace sacreds quite well; better Blood/Death than previous, + Astral)
EA Tien Chi 4 4 5 3 2? (good troops, great versatility of mages; good summons; learn to use any variation of mages can take a lot)
MA Tien Chi 4? 5? 5? 3 2? (as above except less mages variability &amp; less summons)
MA Shinuyama 3? 4 4? 2 2? (no sacreds &amp; difficult to get military machine going - need scales; variable mages can be a pain to learn)
LA Bogarus 4 4 4? 2 ? (their troops are actually not bad and mages give good versatility; Dominion kill is an option I think they should excercise; plus ability to hurt enemy economy - this could make a strong mid to late game. I still think they should be 2 nations, though.)

Re: Dominions Nations Evaluations ;)
 

Since I used to be addicted to that drug, I have to comment, for sake of veracity. The Horde (evil WoW races) did NOT want paladins. Facing the wall of rejection and ignorance they were getting from the devs, eventually the pleading did change to "fine, then just give us paladins.....". But what the Horde wanted, was simply for shamans to not suck horribly compared to paladins in the same raid encounters.


Taking the analogy back here again, I don't think anyone here wants all the nations to be vaguely similar. There is just a feeling that some weaknesses and drawbacks are more crippling than others, and some strengths and bonuses are less useful than others. One of the points of this thread, was to help highlight problems. So rather than people running around smacking about "MA Man is weak", and yada yada, if 10 people all rated MA Man at 4/4/2 for the power ratings, or 4/3/2 or whatever, then this would directly show that there is a widely accepted problem in their late game specifically.

By pinpointing the weak areas of the weaker nations (and conversely, any nation rating too highly, might use a small tweak down in some way), allows the discussion to then become more focused, and useful. So if we say MA Man has late game issues, then we can start to look for late game specific solutions, such as new national summons, perhaps a special nation specific Nature evocation of some sort. Also I had the thought that if they are seen as great woodsmen and "rangers" as a whole, their national troops could thematically receive a mobility increase, specifically boosting all national units +1 to their map move, and being more liberal with FS/MS so that later in the game as mobility becomes ever more important, their less relevant troops can at least be present.

Let's not ask that MA Man play like any other nation, but request it be added to in a meaningful way that makes it a stronger opponent in the late game. Then let's take that philosophy and extend it to other nations.

A theoretical example - nations who are weak in the early game might benefit from adding +1 DEF to their national troops, or +1 PRE for their ranged units. It's not that you just grab them and say "what are they weak at, let's fix it", but rather to ask what are they strong at, and see if that can be turned into something that can be relied upon more. One thought I had for early game weakness, is to give a potentially useful low level summons. EA Agartha has Rhuax Pact for example, which gives them 5 Magma Children for 2 F gems, and only takes Conj 3. These units are not singularly powerful, and don't make an "I win" strategy alone, but they are a powerful tool in their arsenal - and they are one of the only nations that gets an early national summon worth burning gems on. A number of nations could get their early game improvement simply by buffing the low level summons that they already have, preferably not by making them stronger (too easy to make them too strong), but by increasing the number per cast, or gem cost efficiency to make them a viable option.

Re: Dominions Nations Evaluations ;)
 

A really nice and important post JimMorrison. Even if my opinion surely doesn't count, I'd like to express my agreement with every single word you said http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/smirk.gif

Re: Dominions Nations Evaluations ;)
 

I agree a good post JimMorrison.

I don't think many people are calling for nations to be made all alike. Or even that they are all balanced.

But tweaking a few things. Be they minor cost or stats changes or a minor but useful national summons or spell hardly does this.

Re: Dominions Nations Evaluations ;)
 

JimMorrison :

I will repeat myself - many nations are unbalanced because of unbalaned magic paths. Take look at some:
Astral:
- Mind Hunt to kill non-S nations unless they are lucky and diversify
- Magic Duel to kill low level S nations or non-S that get lucky and diversify into some S magic
- precision 100 spells that are not affeced by many things like Darkness
- Enslave, Master Enslave
- Communions
- Wishing
- Teleportation
- Golems

Death:
- all undead spam
- life after death
- tartarians and other good SCs/thugs
- Darkness

And what other paths get?
Nature:
- Charm: ha, ha, with that range? If you mass huge amount of probably cap only mages you can stop 1-2 SCs if he isn't expecting that
- Mass Regen: to die slower? in end-game battles end fast anway

Earth, Fire, Air get some nice spells. But how many nations can really cast them? Well, astral nations mostly. You just get communion and cast them. Other nations need expensive boosters, putting additional gems, wasting turn to cast a buff like phoenix power... I don't think anyone would complain if Man had N6 mages, well, probably even N20 mages wouldn't make it powerful enough. Nut at least crones wouldn't massively die of old age every winter with growth3.

Re: Dominions Nations Evaluations ;)
 

I don't know what you're repeating Zel, but I didn't state that I felt that "all nations are differently created equally". What I did say, was that I feel that arguments that lean towards suggesting something like giving all nations access to Astral, are not a productive line of reasoning.

As I was saying, since the consensus is that MA Man starts out strong, but has no strong options in the late game, that we understand the basic problem. You can enumerate all you want on the relative benefits of other paths, but you're not suggesting a solution, unless it is to give them access to Astral or Death, which is the sort of request I was specifically trying to avoid.

Now, if high end Nature magic had a couple of choice spells/summons added, or perhaps there were a couple of options added just as nationals for Man, it could go a long way to bridging the gap. Also, pursuing the line of reasoning I had about adding FS to all Man troops, they could be given a top end BE, some sort of Grasping Weeds or something that causes a small amount of damage each turn, and impedes the movement of any unit which lacks FS.

Obviously it can be stated that for various reasons, Nature is one of the weaker paths in late game. Fine, we get that. Just try to come up with some creative solutions to the problem - creative, thematic, easily implemented solutions. The Grasping Weeds spell I just described could help, but obviously it's not enough to compete meaningfully with the other options, so more is needed. Our Devs thrive on inspiration, not on argument. We're simply past the stage of "proving" a disparity, the point is made, now find something that will spark interest in getting the problem actually solved.

Personally, I'd prefer to put some more effort into getting help for the nations who are soft in the early game. There will always be more creative solutions to a late game weakness, than an early game weakness. But this forum has been stuck on MA Man for over a month now, let's get something solid and put that puppy to bed. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif